


love, interrupted

by DaydreamNightmare



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, I Needed to Write This Okay, Missing Scenes, Rose x Nine is very shortly mentioned, Spans Across Season 2, The Author Regrets Nothing, Unnecessarily Dramatic at Times, episode dialogue, kind of?, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:14:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22188436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaydreamNightmare/pseuds/DaydreamNightmare
Summary: New man, she thinks as she observes him in his new clothes, an eccentric mix of pinstriped suits and sandshoes and a long duster, all brown and not black and leathery and jumpery -He sends the TARDIS off into the vortex and talks a mile a minute about New Earth and he just spent six whole days on Earth with her and her mum and Mickey and it's all so different and utterly the same.Same man. Different casing.New new Doctor, as it were.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 15
Kudos: 95





	love, interrupted

**Author's Note:**

> So like six months ago I rewatched all of Doctor Who and got violently thrown back into my feelings about Ten and Rose. What followed was a 20 page word document of tropes and headcanons of which this is the first 10 or so. Enjoy!

She looks into the heart of the TARDIS and then her blood sings.

All of time and space, everything that ever was, is or ever will be, it's spilling into her skin and out of it in overwhelming waves, crashing out in screams.

It's amazing. It's beautiful.

It's no effort at all to dematerialize, and she thinks she sighs when space and time rush through her as she rushes towards him.

The electric staticky screams of the Daleks are the second thing she hears; the first is a rhythmic double heartbeat speeding into breathlessness.

 _He's alive_ , her voice echoes in her head. Not her voice. _Her_ voice. Theirs.

When she sees him, she melts unto herself.

She tells him, and he stares at her in fear and worship, hearts picking up again at her words.

"I take the words and I scatter them," she says, and vaguely perceives that she's scattering them in new places, never-before-seen landmarks. She sees the TARDIS and sticks herself all over her. _Better hold on to that._

"You're going to burn," he says insistently, pleading with her and all of her revolts. Does he not understand?

"I want you safe," escapes her, all dipped in feelings and daydreams. " _My_ Doctor," she wants to reach out and touch his face, all of his faces, he's – she's – always beautiful, always hers, _hers_. "Protected from the false god."

"You cannot hurt me," the Dalek emperor insists and her being laughs almost. "I am immortal!"

"You are tiny," she tells him definitively, and she means it so much it drips from her words and around them all, sizzling disdain on their silly little metal bodies. "I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence. And I divide them."

It is barely a thought, barely consciousness as her hand is raised and the Daleks disintegrate around her into her, death leaving its hollow markings in her skin, the Dalek particles screaming at their demise.

"The Time War ends," she says, and the Doctor looks stricken in a way he never has before, in a way he almost did when he saw the Dalek she sympathized with at the time.

(It disintegrates too, not thirty seconds after they've left him, shiny dust almost too small to register settling onto the floors of the Museum.)

The Dalek emperor screams, but he's only using up energy. He snaps into nothingness, his screams echoes across time and space, circulating to and fro Rose.

"Rose, you've done it. Now stop. Just let go," the Doctor begs, but she's too immersed in it, feeling out existence even where it doesn't want to let her.

"How can I let go?" her voice is shaking when she feels a warm familiar strand between the innumerable unknow ones. It's Jack, it's Jack, and he's dead floors below them, handsome face slack, body smelling of burning, bones barely holding onto one another. No, this will not do. "I bring life," she says and drowns him in it, his gasp so loud her eardrums vibrate -

It's not just Jack's voice, it's all of it, all of time and space and the Sun and the Moon and every last corner of the smallest star. Jack laughing with a handsome man with blue eyes, the Doctor yelling out Yaz's name, Mickey and Martha tying the knot before saving the world, and then saving it again and again and again, all of it, burning and being reborn, and screaming as it fades out and in, all those people, her mum, and her dad, and everything that could ever be, and everything that never was-

"My head," she whimpers when her eyesight gives, and she can only focus on his eyes, the rest of her vision filled with all that was.

"Come here," he says and she does, and he's all that matters, among all that pain and love and laughter and emptiness, he's there, and there's a quirk in his lips and oh, _God_ -

"It's killing me," she can barely stand from the pain, her ears are bleeding out. Or in. It's all too much, it's drowning her, sneaking into the crevices of her lungs.

"I think you need a Doctor."

As quick as it all turned golden, it all goes away.

She's gone.

It's quiet.

-.-

When she comes to, it's not even a blur; her head feels like it's catching up with her body, but she can't remember anything, and she can't figure out what's wrong. It's almost correct, where everything is, but it's like there's a synapse that's decided to shift ever just so.

There's no time to think about her wonky head, anyway. The Doctor is dying before her eyes. Her blood rushes in her ears.

He's a new man, all tall and thin and lanky, all hair and sideburns and a too-big smile as his too-brown eyes asses her in that way that he does.

Did.

Does?

He can't change back, can't change forward, he's dead, dead, dead, except he takes her hand, and tells her _run_ and his cool hand is right, just right against her clammy one, and she looks at him and he smiles and-

And-

And-

It all goes tits up of course.

-.-

New man, she thinks as she observes him in his new clothes, an eccentric mix of pinstriped suits and sandshoes and a long duster, all brown and not black and leathery and jumpery -

He sends the TARDIS off into the vortex and talks a mile a minute about New Earth and he just spent six whole days on Earth with her and her mum and Mickey and it's all so different and utterly the same.

Same man. Different casing.

New new Doctor, as it were.

She grabs his arm and stands close and tells him how much she loves it, the travelling, and all that comes with it, and she manages not to tell him that she loves him too and never wants to let him go. Same man, very different casing. It would _feel_ too soon, maybe, probably, and she doesn't want to lose him, would gladly spend the rest of her days pining after him, cuddled up platonically if that means she gets to spend it in his presence.

There's probably something unhealthy about it, but she sees a werewolf, an _actual_ werewolf, and Queen Victoria, and wins 10 quid she'll never see but doesn't really need to anyway-

Sarah Jane appears in her life like a bucket of uncomfortably cold water. Her mind is screaming at her as she takes her and the Doctor in, the closeness, the easy banter and affection. She knew on some level he'd travelled with others before, has seen men's suits and women's skirts reverently placed in barely used closets, a room she stumbles into one night that definitely doesn't belong to anyone currently on the ship.

It doesn't cross her mind that others have had what she has with him.

She's childish, and lashing out, and being embarrassing, but her mind is swimming and her palms are sweaty and there's fear clutching at her chest.

"You just leave us behind," she manages not to cry even though she want to do so much more than that. "Is that what you're going to do me?"

She feels so breakable, a feeling she's rarely ever felt before, a feeling that crawls just beneath her skin uncomfortably, jagged in its core.

"No, not to you," he says it like it pains him, looks like he'd rather regenerate in front of her again, and she has half a mind to let him because she doesn't think his face suits the feeling it's trying to contain, or the other way around.

"You wither, and you die," he almost spits the words out. "Imagine watching that happen to someone who you-"

Someone who you what? Someone who you what? She lies awake at night when all is said and done, stares at the TARDIS ceiling, going through scenarios, finishing his sentence where he hasn't.

-.-

He finishes it quite well in seventeenth century France. Mickey feels like a punishment, and she feels guilty, and the Doctor traipses around centuries like it doesn't even bloody matter, and of course it doesn't, nothing matters to him does it? 900 years of time and space – saying that she's deluding herself in regards of what she thinks he thinks of her is not a strong enough word to use.

She stands behind a mirror and watches as Madame du Pompadour takes him by the hand and drags him off with her like a string puppet, and barely flinches as he disappears.

Mickey tries to make light of it, but Rose mostly wants to cry.

It's fairly standard, all of it; she almost dies, and then she doesn't, and she has to go talk to the woman who the Doctor felt was more deserving than her and pretend it's alright, and she has to try not to scream in agony when he bursts through the mirror and gets stuck millenia back.

"You can fly the TARDIS though, right?" Mickey asks after three hours have gone.

"No, I don't know how to fly it, he never taught me," she says automatically and Mickey raises an eyebrow.

"Looked like you flew it when we burst it open," he shrugs. "Of course, now we don't have a bleedin' truck, do we, it'd take a bit more than even my manly strength-"

"What're you talking about?" she asks with a frown and Mickey looks at her like she's gone mad.

"When he sent you back from the Game Station," he says, like she's slow. "We cracked open the console and then you disappeared and then you came back for Christmas."

And she remembers, all of a sudden, that she doesn't remember. She remembers the sending her off, and the crying, and slamming her hands and cracking her skin against the console, and then she remembers her mum driving over the truck and Mickey cracking it open and -

And then she wakes up, and he dies, and now he's gone for good, so he might as well be dead again.

She leans her head on Mickey's shoulder and she cries and tries to focus on the guilt she feels about Mickey, lest she focus on the pain the Doctor's absence causes. Mickey not only lets her, but he holds her, and it only makes her cry more.

-.-

The Doctor comes back, by some miracle, by some godly intervention, and she doesn't even care that he's not really looking at her, that he's as far away from the very concept of 'fine' as one can be; she allows herself to be selfish, accepts that ultimately that she'll always be when it comes to him.

They crash into a different universe, and her dad's alive, and she's a _dog_ , and her mum has been gruesomely murdered.

Mickey stays behind and Rose waits until they're in the vortex before she starts sobbing. The Doctor hits the stabilizer, which he almost never does, and he walks incredibly long steps before he wraps his arms around her and lets her soak his shirt until her head is pounding and her face pinches uncomfortably.

The TARDIS whirrs and she realizes they've landed, and she can hear the telly and smell the copious amount of tea her mother has lying around the house. She runs out of the TARDIS and cries as she hugs her, undoubtedly her with her bleach-fried hair and cheap glitzy earrings and soft-worn tracksuit, and Rose feels six years old as Jackie rubs her back and hugs her tightly.

They stay up late, her telling her mum the whole awful story, and Jackie pretending not to cry when she does, and the Doctor leaning with his elbows on his knees, listening reverently when Rose and Jackie start telling stories about Mickey and his gran. It's the most domestic thing they've done, Rose thinks distantly, as the Doctor mentions how they saw Mickey as a child when they got stuck in the past and Jackie laughs, says that's Mickey, all right, holds tightly to the strongest woman in the room.

Jackie falls asleep sprawled across the couch, and Rose tucks her in with a blanket and kisses her forehead gently. Tears threaten to burst down her cheeks again, and when she looks up at the Doctor, it's already too late.

He mutters calming words into her ear, and he rubs her back and he takes her to her room when she sways on her feet and her vision goes fuzzy. She's bone tired by the time they're inside, the adrenaline rush she's been continuously on leaving no prisoners behind as it crashes against her.

"Come on, you're almost there," he says as she stumbles towards her bed and he pushes her down gently on her back. All her muscles are screaming and all her bones are rattled and her head feels like the TARDIS landed on it. He grabs a blanket to pull over her, wraps her up like a burrito until she's toasty warm.

"Hey," she mutters, forces her eyes open. "What happened on the Game Station?"

It's dark, but she can feel him still.

"Go to sleep, Rose," he says gently and runs his fingers across her cheek. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."

"No," she says. "Talk about it now."

"You'll fall asleep in about seventy-four seconds."

"Then pretend it's a bed time story," she manages to pronounce everything in a way that can be understood. "Make sure I remember this time."

When she wakes up the next day, it's late afternoon and she's well-rested, and she doesn't remember, but she does know. She watches the Doctor flit around the apartment fixing bits and bobs as her mother talks his ear off with neighbourhood gossip and he makes the appropriate noises in the appropriate places and he looks at Rose sometimes and smiles slightly.

An unfamilair, uncomfortable feeling tugs at her insides, and she sips at her tea. Now, everything is alright. It's going to be alright.

-.-

It starts off promising, going to the fifties, her wearing a grand pink skirt, him having spent an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror doing his hair, and of course they land nowhere near Elvis, but it's still lovely, and carefree, until it isn't.

She loses her face, very literally, to a bitchy psychopathic television set, and time disappears as she only vaguely exists in nothingness, screaming without sound for what feels like an eternity until it snaps and she blinks and her eyes are open to an unusually-bright-for-Britain sky.

All is well that ends well as they say, but the most important fact about the whole affair is how tightly the Doctor holds her when they meet, how he grabs onto her like she'll disappear again in the blink of an eye, his hold almost uncomfortable around her ribs.

"Will it," she starts, a stubborn strand of hair catching her attention. "That thing, is it trapped for good on video?"

"Hope so," he says, nailing the unconcerned approach. "Just to be on the safe side though, I'll use my unrivalled knowledge of transtemporal extirpation methods to neutralise the residual electronic pattern."

The feeling that she's just dribbled on her shirt has become something she's accustomed to by now. "You what?"

"I'm going to tape over it."

She laughs freely. "Just leave it to me. I'm always doing that."

That's what they do in the evening, or whenever they are by the time they're back in the TARDIS and Rose is wearing her pyjamas and the Doctor is the picture of lazying about after having removed his coat jacket and loosened his tie. He has her on the console floor with a portable tv as he tinkers around fixing loose wires, and she drapes herself over the seat and falls asleep while watching a rerun of _The Intergalactic Top Model_ , taping it over the casette tape that holds the Wire.

She starts awake later, and finds herself in her room and in her bed, though it seems it's a frown smaller since the last time she's been in it. It takes her another moment to realize that's due to the fact that she's covered in a blanket on top of which lies a Time Lord.

She turns around to face his sleeping form as carefully as she can so as not to wake him up and lies there awake, cataloguing the features of his face.

(She doesn't think that, for all her feelings, she's ever appreciated his old face enough. She's not making that mistake twice.)

-.-

She'll never get used to losing him.

-.-

They're on a spaceship orbiting a black hole that may actually be the physical location of the literal Hell, along with a possible Satan or something of that persuasion hiding in its depths, the TARDIS is gone, and she's kissing the Doctor in a too-small and probably too-public alcove. More importantly: he's kissing her back.

She wishes she could say it's this amazing, passionate thing, but it's tinged with an unmistakeable air of desperation as she claws at the buttons of his shirt and moans when he bites at her neck and then soothes the sting with his tongue. His hands are cold as he palms her breasts under her shirt, but when she shivers, she's boiling hot.

It's rushed; there's no telling when the next emergency will sound, and there's zippers being lowered. They push one another's trousers and pants down just enough, and Rose turns to the wall. He grips her hips and she bites her lip, and then he's pushing her legs as open as they go, still encased in her too-tight jeans. He sneaks his hand around to her front and his fingers slide between her folds just as he uses his other hand to guide his cock inside her. She bites her wrist to muffle the sounds and gasps coming out from her mouth. He uses the junction of her neck and shoulder for the same purpose.

It's quick, it's filthy, and it's a tiny bit awkward, their movements discordant, but the pleasure is still there, coursing through her veins and concentrating where they're joined, and it's still too much, it's _still_ not enough, and her knees buckle under her when the pressure builds up and when he snaps his hips almost too roughly, rubs her almost too hard, growls when her muscles contract around him, it all breaks and she shudders as stars fire behind her eyelids as her body goes slack; in the aftershocks of her orgasm, he groans when he spills inside her, his head heavy on her shoulder, his breath warm against her neck as he catches it.

 _So much for the respiratory bypass_ , she thinks as his breathing slows down, and when he presses a small kiss to her skin, she closes her eyes and presses her forehead against the steel wall.

They arrange their clothes in silence, and she squirms uncomfortably at the wetness between her legs. She stares at the floor and wrings her hands as he tightens his tie in place and runs a hand through his hair and down his face.

“I'm sorry-”

“Don't say that.”

Tentatively, they join their hands, fingers sliding into place easily. Death is knocking at their door, much closer this time than any other, and she's damned if what might turn out to be the last of their minutes together is spent in some pseudo-self-deprecating mood.

-.-

(“ _Stuck with you, that's not so bad._ ”

“ _Yeah?_ ”

“ _Yes._ ”)

-.-

She loses him, again, and she finds him, and when she hears his voice over the comm, she wants to cry and scream and laugh at the same time. When she enters the TARDIS and he's there, she hugs him without restraint, and he holds her up, relief almost palpable in the air.

When all is said and done, when they're all alone, the Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS, just as it should be, an awkward silence descends upon them.

“Rose-”

“I'm tired,” she proclaims grandly, goes so far to stretch her arms. “Come with me?”

She doesn't give him the chance to say no, just grabs his hand and walks. Her room is not far from the console floor, and she walks the path with certainty. He follows silently but willingly, and she takes pleasure in knowing he'll follow her to the ends of the Earth with no protest.

(Briefly she thinks that not even Madame de bloody Pompadour would rank higher than she does, not now.)

When they're inside, she turns to him and looks him squarely in the eyes; the hand she's still holding she takes and places it on her hip.

“Help me take my clothes off,” she says, and his fingers twitch at the edge of her shirt.

“Rose,” he says, eyes guarded and looking everywhere but at her.

“Help me take my clothes off,” she says, more forcefully. “And I'll help you take off yours.”

He stands still, but she doesn't, and she pushes his suit jacket off his shoulders easily, deftly starts undoing his shirt buttons. When she reaches the buttons on his stomach, his wooden fingers move – _finally_ – and he pushes her shirt up slowly, revealing inch by inch of skin reverently, letting the pads of his fingers touch it as though by accident. She shivers when he pushes her shirt over her breasts and his fingers skirt across the cups of her bra with a bit more pressure than strictly necessary.

She reaches the last button of his shirt, and he taps her underarms. “Up.”

She puts her arms up and he pulls the shirt over her head and tosses it aside. Before she can, he shrugs off his shirt and pulls off his vest. She bites her lip as she surveys his body, all that skin she's never seen before, not counting the frantic attempt of shoving him into Howard's pyajamas back when he was all shiny and new.

“You have a scar,” she says, and traces it with his finger. His muscles contract at her touch.

“Had my appendix out,” he says and she smiles.

“In this body? Where did you find the time?”

“Time Lord,” he shrugs and gives her a small smile. He frowns for a moment and then reaches towards her trousers, popping the button and pulling the zipper down. He pushes them down and raises an eyebrow when he realizes she's not wearing any underwear. Her cheeks redden as his fingers drag down her naked hipbones.

“Didn't want to put on dirty pants after I showered on the ship,” she says and bites her lip and he makes an _ah_ sound. He peels the trousers off her legs slowly, torturously, and he grips her calves when he has her step out of the jeans. He stands up back to his full height and she reaches out towards his zipper, pushing the pinstriped trousers down, a tad quicker than he did with hers, and she sends him an amused smirk when he's naked under them.

“Oh you, know,” he shrugs as he steps out of the trousers. “Dirty pants and all.”

“Right,” she says as she stands up and takes a step towards him. She takes his hands and pulls them around her waist. He presses her close, and his erection brushes up against her stomach. He undoes her bra and pulls it off and then they're pressed up naked head to toe, his arms around her waist, hers around his neck.

“Do you really think this is a good idea?” he asks quietly and she looks at him, _really_ looks at him, sees all 900 years, all the things he's done. She looks at him and sees his first face, and she thinks she has an inkling of his future ones. There's something in her brain knocking about, strands of gold peeking out at the images of him.

“I really don't care,” she says and presses a soft kiss against his jaw. “I thought – I didn't want to think you were gone, I wanted to stay, but you were -”

“I'm here now,” he says, splays his fingers against her lower back.

“I'm so tired of losing you, Doctor,” she says, and her voice is a barely wobbling whisper. “And not knowing-”

He kisses her before she can finish her sentence, and she doesn't want to kill him for it, but rather stands up on her tippy-toes and kisses him back with conviction, runs her fingers through his hair. He sighs contently and grips her hips softly, rubs her thumbs against her skin.

Where they were all rush and force at the ship, it's all soft kisses and reverent touches. She ghosts the trail of freckles across his cheekbones, finds the elusive mole on his back, discovers that it makes his breath stutter when she drags her fingers along his hipbones. He kisses his way down her chest, finds that it makes her whimper when he kisses her neck and sucks a hickey into her thigh that makes her giggle and then gasp.

He takes her to orgasm with his fingers and his mouth, and she's half-wild when she pushes him on his back to return the favour. He grips her hair and bucks into her mouth, and pleads and begs with her, tells her how good she is, praises her with every lick of her tongue.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he gasps out, shaking as he pulls up and away from her lips.

“What's wrong?”

“I'd rather finish inside you,” he says desperately, and pulls her up so that she's straddling him, groans when his cock slides between her wet folds.

“What, no superior refractory period?” she teases, a little breathless as she rocks against his cock and coates it with her wetness.

“Of course there is, I ju-” he moans when she slides onto him and she gasps at the fullness, kisses him as she rocks her hips and runs her hands into his hair and across his chest.

“Fuck, Doctor,” she moans as she rides him slowly and he sucks on her skin and finds her clitoris between them and rubs slow, lazy circles against it.

“Yes, yes,” he breathes out, bucking up as much as he can, growling in frustration before flipping them over. She's indecently loud when the change in position makes him hit all the right spots inside her, and he fucks her in slow, controlled, deep strokes and he whispers praise and promises in strained breaths.

She falls apart and falls back together as time crawls by at a snail's pace and then completely runs away from her. When she catches her breath, when they finally stop moving, utterly wrecked and disheveled, her skin is clammy and the sheets around her are uncomfortably soaked with sweat and God knows what. He kisses her neck lazily from behind her, still inside her and pressed up against the length of her back.

“You're warm,” she says in several deep breaths as she wills her heartbeat to normal. “You're never this warm.”

“I've had quite a laborious several hours,” he says and she can feel his smirk on her skin.

“That explains it,” she says and laughs, and he wraps his arm securely across her waist, palm grabbing one of her breasts. She sighs, completely sated, and cuddles up into the sheets.

“Rose,” he says, so quiet she almost doesn't hear him, and she hums a soft inquiring noise. “I thought – back in the pit – for a moment, I thought – but then I didn't, I knew you'd find a way, I knew – Rose Tyler – this can't happen – I couldn't –”

“I'm gonna stay with you forever,” she says, all determined. “I mean it. I really don't – I can't go back to a life without you, Doctor. You're stuck with me.”

He's quiet for a moment, and his fingers are absently drawing patterns around her nipple. At least she thinks it's absently. It's distracting either way.

“That's not so bad.”

-.-

It's a precarious balance from then, because, and here's the thing – she's definitely in love with him. She's so in love it hurts, she's so in love that it is absolutely and utterly impossible to lie to herself any longer.

He doesn't touch her again. Well, that's not true, he does, he hugs her, and he holds her hand, and he offers comfort when it's needed, but it's never more than strictly necessary.

He doesn't sleep with her again.

She's disappointed on a deeper level than normal, but she's not surprised. He's told her as much, told her it can't happen, however many broken sentences it took. For someone who can never stop talking, he's not the most eloquent when he's spent from hours of mindblowing sex.

Typical.

He takes her to a planet where the wind blows loud and shrilly, and there's nothing but rock and some odd lifeforms flying across the sky in shapes.

“How long are you gonna stay with me?” he asks and she turns to find him looking at her, a million questions in his eyes.

This is her out, she supposes, but they both know what she's going to answer. There's no doubt in her mind; when she looks at the future, she sees herself holding his hand, forever.

“Forever,” she says, and he smiles, and she smiles, and it's enough.

-.-

“I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never going to leave you. So what can I do to help?”

-.-

She slams her fists against the great white wall, screaming into nothingness. Nothing is going to take her back, not screaming, not crying, not banging her fists, certainly not those useless yellow things Pete and the others used to hop back and forth. She presses against the wall closely, tries not to sniffle; she can almost imagine she can feel him, listening for her as she listens for him.

One pitiful white wall. That's what it takes to destroy her life, to break her into a million pieces, to obliterate whatever Rose Tyler was or will ever be.

Her hands ache, and her mum holds her tightly and Pete tells them they're coming home with him – _and staying_ , is the implication – and she can only blink. Jackie holds her by the shoulders, and Mickey has his hand on the small of her back.

She's never felt so alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, I needed to post this more than I needed to breathe. It was cathartic. Thank you for reading!


End file.
